Diving Accidents

Nathan Meade, one of Australia's premier divers, was killed when he apparently misjudged a dive during practice and smashed into the concrete diving platform Thursday at Brisbane, Australia. Meade, 21, was pronounced dead at Princess Alexandra Hospital. Doctors said he suffered massive brain damage. The Australian high-dive champion was a top contender for a spot on his nation's 1988 Olympic team.

University of Oregon junior Alex Rovello drowned Saturday after failing to surface following a 60-foot dive into Tamolitch Falls in Willamette National Forest in western Oregon. Friends and bystanders tried to rescue the tennis player when he failed to surface after diving from a cliff into the Blue Pool at the base of the falls, but they were hampered by the deep, 37-degree water, the Linn County Sherriff's Department said. "The Oregon tennis family is devastated by the loss of Alex," Oregon men's tennis Coach Nils Schyllander said . "He was an amazing person and teammate and his spirit will live on forever with all of us who were fortunate enough to have known him. " The popular swimming hole, located about two miles north of a campground, is so remote that one witness needed to run two miles before getting cell service to call 911, KTVB.com reported . Rovello's body was recovered by dive teams and deputies more than 30 feet from the water's surface.

A 22-year-old Chatsworth woman died Friday in a scuba diving accident off Santa Catalina Island, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department reported. The woman, whose name was not released pending notification of relatives, was a student diver on a boat operated by Ventura Dive & Sport diving school, Deputy Douglas Miller said. Five other student divers and two teachers were swimming from a vessel called Peace in 100 feet of water about 10 a.m. in an area called Farnsworth Bank, Sgt.

A sheriff's rescue diver was rushed to a hospital with leg injuries Friday after becoming entangled in a sunken sailboat while searching the wreckage for its missing owner. Deputy Ken Kropidlowski, an 18-year veteran of the Orange County Sheriff's Department and a member of its dive team, was 30-feet deep off a jetty in Newport Beach when he got tangled in debris about 11 a.m. and made an emergency ascent, Jim Amormino, a sheriff's spokesman, said.

Dives into shallow surf along the Southern California coast have killed three people and injured at least 122 others since 1976, a study by the University of Southern California has found. The study, prompted by a rash of crippling injuries and multimillion-dollar lawsuits in 1984 and 1985, found that 41 victims were paralyzed or suffered other serious injuries over an 11-year period by "plunging dives" into the surf from shallow water at 20 beaches between San Diego and Santa Barbara.

The 4th District Court of Appeal has rejected a $6-million lawsuit filed by the parents of an Arizona boy who was paralyzed for life after a 1984 diving accident in Laguna Beach, city officials said. Byron Rombalski, who is now 18, was severely injured when he dove headfirst off a rock into shallow water at Pearl Street beach, City Manager Kenneth C. Frank said.

Former major league baseball pitcher Pete Redfern remembers with chilling clarity the day he became one of the more than 1,000 Americans paralyzed each year in diving accidents. "I stepped up to the sea wall, and the water looked to be about five feet deep, maybe four feet deep," Redfern said, recalling that day in Newport Beach in 1983 when he became a paraplegic, abruptly ending his career and changing his life forever.

Only 13 years old, Carlos Gallano already had seen friends drown--or rupture their eardrums deep underwater. Others were slashed by propellers or attacked by sharks. His job was to swim all day, pounding a heavy rock on fragile coral reefs to drive fish into nets. At night, he'd fight for space with 300 others crammed on a filthy, fish-filled deck. His pay for 10 months at sea: $75. "The hardship was too much," he said. "We were like slaves. "So I escaped.

Authorities Monday identified a scuba diver whose body was found off Santa Catalina Island over the weekend. Edward Hayes, 71, of Glendora and a 40-year-old unidentified companion entered Catalina Harbor between 3:45 and 4 p.m. Saturday, then split up to search for abalone, said Deputy Irma Becerra of the Sheriff's Information Bureau. The younger diver came back to the boat later and waited for Hayes, and then notified the Coast Guard.

A 38-year-old Arizona man drowned in 4 feet of water Sunday after he went scuba diving in an abandoned well shaft and became entangled in debris in a narrow cave, a Los Angeles Sheriff's Department spokesman said. A rescue diver pulled the body of the man from the well around 5:45 p.m. following a search-and-rescue mission that began after the victim's brother reported him missing around 1:20 p.m. Los Angeles County Sheriff's Lt.

A San Jose scuba diver died five days after she passed out below the surface entangled in kelp at Whalers Cove, officials said. Tammy Nguyen, 42, became the fifth person to die in a diving accident off the Central Coast in the last 10 months. Nguyen had been on life support at Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula since her accident Saturday. She died Wednesday. Nguyen came to the U.S. as a refugee from Vietnam when she was a teenager. She was described as an experienced diver.

A Huntington Beach man died while diving at Crescent Bay Point on Sunday morning. Phuc Le, 35, was pronounced dead at South Coast Medical Center in Laguna Beach at 10:39 a.m. A diver with Le saw him floating shortly after they surfaced together, said Tom Trager, a Laguna Beach marine safety officer.

Rescue workers searched the water off Catalina Island on Sunday for a 62-year-old man who disappeared while scuba diving. U.S. Coast Guard crews rescued another diver about two miles off the island as the divers ascended in about 100 feet of water. Authorities did not know what caused the incident. The rescued diver, a 35-year-old man, was taken to a hospital in stable condition, according to Coast Guard Lt. Rob Griffiths.

Panic struck 60 feet down. A student in John Corso's scuba class had spit out her regulator. Survival instincts took over as she found herself unable to breathe. She bolted for the surface in a rush of adrenaline. Corso pursued. He tried to slow her ascent, mindful of what can happen when compressed air expands too fast in the body, like gas fizzing from a bottle of champagne. Two-thirds of the way up, it was Corso--not the student--who got slammed.

A prominent marine researcher died Sunday after exploring sunken ships with her husband and three other divers off the San Diego coast. Rescuers found Mia Tegner, 53, a scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, unconscious at a depth of about 90 feet, said city lifeguard Lt. Brant Bass. Tegner, an expert on kelp forest ecology, was very experienced, completing more than 3,000 dives, Bass said.

The accident was freakish enough: a diver trapped in an old, murky well in La Crescenta, his safety rope hopelessly tangled as he fought for air. But the fact that it happened to Paul Francis Hayden, say those close to him, is truly unexplainable. Hayden was a U.S. Air Force pararescuer, a member of one of the most elite, best-trained units in the military, a tightly muscled 39-year-old who had plunged from helicopters, swum against currents and hoisted hurt fishermen from frothy seas.

A 24-year-old man died after he tried to dive 30 feet from the roof of a two-story apartment complex into a pool and missed the water by one foot, authorities said. Alan Geoffrey Jones, 24, of Fountain Valley, had been drinking for at least five hours Sunday when he dove onto the concrete pool deck shortly before 10:30 p.m., Police Sgt. Janet Perez said. Jones had been visiting a couple at the apartment in the 2800 block of 17th Street.

Three U.S. Marines died while scuba diving off the North Shore of Oahu, when they apparently became disoriented about 100 feet inside a submerged lava tube, officials said Saturday. The men were found Friday in the cave off Pupukea Beach Park, known as the "Elevator Shaft," Fire Capt. Robin Lee said.

A 38-year-old Arizona man drowned Sunday after he went scuba diving in an abandoned well shaft and became entangled in 4 feet of water in a narrow, debris-filled cave in La Crescenta, a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department spokesman said. A rescue diver pulled the body from the well about 5:45 p.m. after a search and rescue mission that began when the victim's brother walked into the Crescenta Valley sheriff's station about 1:20 p.m. and reported him missing. Sheriff's Lt.

A 38-year-old Arizona man drowned in 4 feet of water Sunday after he went scuba diving in an abandoned well shaft and became entangled in debris in a narrow cave, a Los Angeles Sheriff's Department spokesman said. A rescue diver pulled the body of the man from the well around 5:45 p.m. following a search-and-rescue mission that began after the victim's brother reported him missing around 1:20 p.m. Los Angeles County Sheriff's Lt.